What keeps you playing Civ IV?

[605civ]

What is it about Civ IV that keeps you playing, day after day, year after year; what brings you back to this game? Are there a few specific features or a million different things about the game that keep you addicted? For you, what is it about Civ IV that makes you feel like you need to play this game?

 

[lymond]

Civ V keeps me playing Civ IV

By the way, not trying to be an arse, but there are a bazillion such threads like this here and in the Civ V forum. In fact, you can find a couple just below in this forum. Also, in the Civ IV forums, you will find it very skewed towards Civ IV so don't expect objective answers, even though V does indeed suck.

edit: In all fairness, "What keeps you playing Civ IV" is actually an interesting topic. Making it into a "IV vs. V" though is what threw it off.

 

[Jouzou]

My machine can't run Civ V either (at least, not smoothly), but there's still the question why I keep playing it instead of playing something else or not playing games at all. I think the main reason is that every map is random and you have to make most of the land and resources available to you. I also roll a random leader every time to help keep things fresh (though I do a re-roll if it's someone I've played as recently). Another huge reason are the xOTMs that the staff in this very forum kindly keeps hosting.

Also, there's something inherently satisfying about how you start with a couple of guys in loincloths and end up with a (hopefully) huge, industrialized empire.

Edit: In fact, GOTM and WOTM are the only reason I play Vanilla and Warlords anymore.

 

[605civ]

Civ V keeps me playing Civ IV

By the way, not trying to be an arse, but there are a bazillion such threads like this here and in the Civ V forum. In fact, you can find a couple just below in this forum. Also, in the Civ IV forums, you will find it very skewed towards Civ IV so don't expect objective answers, even though V does indeed suck.

edit: In all fairness, "What keeps you playing Civ IV" is actually an interesting topic. Making it into a "IV vs. V" though is what threw it off.

lymond, you're not an arse, at all... you bring up a valid point, there are a bazillion threads like this one. That being said, let me ask the question, What keeps you playing Civ IV?, as you suggested.

For me the pure anticipation of the next move, the next step of my scout into the darkness, the potential outcome of a battle, simply not knowing what will happen next keeps me playing. The balance of having complete control over my empire while at the same time having absolutely no control over the AI empires is gaming glory for me! That, and so many other things, keep me playing Civ IV.

 

[OneFootInThe...]

there is a million and it is something else every time... right now - getting generals with very high XP

edit: and while you could do it in other games too... it is the baseline game which is very refined and challenging which makes this particular tidbit stand out, more exciting and not ruined in the myriad of "basic" problems like the other more recent game... hint... hint

 

[SamSniped]

Because my laptop can't run CoD4, and Steam eats the souls of gamers (and crashed my PC once, but that's another story)
In all seriousness, it is an amazing game. That's why I am still playing it (and CoD4 ).

 

[the343danny]

I started playing Civ 4 again yesterday because there is a sense of diplomacy and kinship between nations here, whereas in Civ 5, everybody is your friend until you become one city too large or one unit too weak. There is a feeling of growth as your nearly bankrupted and overextended nation begins to rise tall with improved infrastructure and your growing commercial center catapults your backwards nation to the top.

In Civ 5, there is no role playing and there is no game worth playing if the AI is bad enough that it requires role playing to be satisfying but because of the diplomacy system, its damn near impossible to feel like a nation. You don't get the feeling of growth with cottages into towns in Civ 4 and the sense of urgency you feel to protect your lands because years of effort can be destroyed by pillagers looting your once prosperous towns. In Civ 5, if something is destroyed including a city, you patch it up and buy back the essentials and never look back. Wealth is static; you cant weigh yourself between maintaining a more powerful army than a robust scientific community. That forces you to only have 2-3 types of cities, including extremely boring trading post cities, spam farm cities, and production. The better combat system is put to waste because in single player, all it does is make the player even more invincible and godly (in multi player, its great). There is little point to one unit per tile combat if the battlefield takes up your entire border since the hexes are so large. They should have subdivided the hexes only for the purpose of combat. And lastly, Civ 5 modding community seems to be puny and insignificant compared to the ones of Civ 4 with the greats such as Kael and Rhyes which molded this game into my most played game of all time.

And I play Civ 4 because I need to play a Civ like game and this one is the best Civ there is. Oh, the thrown away potential Civ 5 had saddens me...

 

[Luthor_Saxburg]

What keeps me playing is trying to win a MultiPlayer game!!!! Not reached that one yet...

 

[Kaitzilla]

There are so many ways to have fun while playing Civ 4. You can role play, war, build, try to make a super hero unit, battle barbs, do mods, read the civlopedia, watch the wonders being built, try a new strategy etc etc etc.

Civ 5 always seems to be punishing you too much to be having fun, while Civ 4 offers you tons of different fun options. Sulla summed it up in a stunning million page article

I noticed a huge increase in fun and enjoyment when trying to win as fast as possible. Instead of abandoning most games before victory, I started completing them.

 

[Cruel]

CIV4 civics, and and most importantly to me, opening to create a mod. They promised to make a game more modable then CIV4, and so far this has not happened.

 

[calibur]

There are so many ways to have fun while playing Civ 4. You can role play, war, build, try to make a super hero unit, battle barbs, do mods, read the civlopedia, watch the wonders being built, try a new strategy etc etc etc.

Civ 5 always seems to be punishing you too much to be having fun, while Civ 4 offers you tons of different fun options. Sulla summed it up in a stunning million page article

I noticed a huge increase in fun and enjoyment when trying to win as fast as possible. Instead of abandoning most games before victory, I started completing them.

I read the whole thing.
Suffice to say any lingering curiosity I had if V was worth buying has been stifled.

 

[Pluvo241]

What is it about Civ IV that keeps you playing, day after day, year after year; what brings you back to this game? Are there a few specific features or a million different things about the game that keep you addicted? For you, what is it about Civ IV that makes you feel like you need to play this game?

I'm in my mid-40s and I've been blissfully playing computer games for decades, but recently I've experienced something I've never really felt before. It happened while I was - finally! - playing Diablo 3. Diablo's launch sucked and I had horrible luck in my repeated attempts to play the game, but then I was playing and it was fun. Cool, I thought; but I hadn't played the game even 12 hours when the feeling, something akin to depression I think, fell on me: I was wasting my time.

Which was funny, because the game was fairly enjoyable. And yet I couldn't escape the feeling. It was weird, but while playing I had the unshakeable sensation of endlessly spinning my wheels as it were. I've played bad games before, of course we all have, and boring games and good games buried underneath an avalanche of clunky interfaces, but here for the first time I had encountered a fun and exciting game that left me feeling bad for having played it.

Which defeats the purpose of playing games in the first place and brings me to why I play Civ IV. The game has soul and leaves me feeling fulfilled when I play it. It's complicated enough to give me the options I crave, but doesn't make things complicated artificially. It rewards me with an endless barrage of small-wins every single session, so that I feel like I've actually accomplished something other than just whiling away my time. Super Sweet Bonus: it does all this while allowing me to wallow in my favorite subject of all time - history!

 

[Tefras]

What keeps us playing Civ IV? ..hmmm..

aging.. I think!?

New games are so predictable for ppl who've played them since the '90s..
I've had my own fair share of xp from other types of games, thousands of hs with online fps bowdown:bf2,3,bc2), realtime strategyC&C), adventure(in the old days..), rpg bowdown:Skyrim....MMO's I don't really like and I'm not really open-minded about liking them in the future -don't know why)

I always come back to playing Civ IV bts (V was good.. for 25 hs total..)..
like a grown mature man always returns home to his wife no matter what he had been doing earlier.. I guess

 

[Lemon Merchant]

I keep playing because it's never the same game twice. Modding for the game makes it interesting for me as well.

The problem with Civ 5 for me was boredom. I tried really really hard to like it, I really did, but I could only manage about 30 hours and I just had to give up. It's like "Civ for Dummies". No offense intended for those that like it, but for me, it was too simplified and the endless clicking was driving me crazy. It took forever to do anything.

The graphics on my monitor at least look washed out and drab, and I just don't find any soul in the game. Civ 4 has a soul, and some depth.

 

[Manco Capac]

Competition. I have played the game so much that competiton is the last retrenchment where fun still wells up.
New record dates of victory is also really fun. Playing for the sake of it has worn off...quite unfortunately.

 

[derflensburger]

I totally agree with you, guys.

For me CIV 5 was interesting for maybe two games.

CIV 4 has been interesting for many years now and I also went back to playing it.

 

[Verarde]

It's never the same game twice. I always end up doing something different, or having to find a different strategy, especially as I progress up the difficulty levels.

 

[lymond]

Competition. I have played the game so much that competiton is the last retrenchment where fun still wells up.
New record dates of victory is also really fun. Playing for the sake of it has worn off...quite unfortunately.

And we need to raise our game to keep in competition with you, and keep you around

 

[Lord_Herobrine]

I think the reason I keep playing Civ IV is the wide variety of game styles to choose from. You can play a game and choose to build a city in one position, finish that game, reload to a previous save and plop the city down in a different position and it can completely change the outcome of the game. It feels as if every game is a new challenge.

 

[damerell]

I only bought it a few months ago. Easy answer.